


opening the graves

by thisismybrainrain



Series: centuries of brooding and blood [13]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Brotp, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismybrainrain/pseuds/thisismybrainrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy feels like she's in the coffin. Carm relates. They stake some vamps in Vienna. Truths happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Graveyard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skeletonannie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonannie/gifts).



Carmilla staked a vamp. 

He fell into dust. 

She smiled. 

Death.

It felt good.

For all these years, she'd searched and her calling: this fight for good had arrived in swords and girls to help and cupcakes and raining stakes of fury.

Tonight wasn't any different.

This cause always rumbled around her chest. In the ground, the dark had suffocated her.

Between the earth. Trapped and muffled from the chaos of war. Then out and into the cycles of the centuries and heartbreak, in came Laura. She lit up the cracks of Carmilla. Beneath her eternal pallor she again felt luminous. 

/

'Do you remember it?,'she asks Buffy. 

'It's never left my mind, sometimes I look at my hands and all I see is soil,' Buffy replies.

'Yeah, B. Makes a change from blood, right?' Carmilla laughed and pulled a hip flask from her jacket. Whiskey flowed from it into her mouth. She passed it to Buffy.

'Does it get easier, Carm?' She asked, taking a hit from the bottle and resting it on a gravestone. There was a few hours of light left. The vamps of Vienna would be retreating soon. The old guard had been emerging from new hell mouths. Crawling across the cobbles and fields of Eastern Europe. 

Buffy had asked Carmilla to patrol because she'd been having the nightmares again. Spike was away and Faith was on a research mission with Laura and, Carmilla was the only who could understand her now.

The dreams had become so real that for a moment, after Buffy woke up the previous night, she'd thought the ceiling was near her face. She waited with her eyes screwed shut for it to pass. Mouth dry. Nails drawing blood in her palms. 

Carmilla said, 'Buff, it'll never disappear. It'll always be there, I don't know where you went when you left this place but it was lighter I'd assume. Right?'

Buffy nodded. Her jaw set, her fist reaching for the whiskey again. Carmilla reached out her hand to stop her, 'look, Buff, I can't tell you what to do, but trust me whiskey will warm you, numb you to stumbling and sleep but it will not erase your death.'

Buffy threw the flask on the floor. The rest of the liquid drained onto the grass.

'Carm, even after all this time, sometimes I think it would have been easier to stay dead.'

'Buff, I am death like perpetually. Trust me, I've spent too many hours turning it over in my mind. Isn't it so easy to say that though? I'm pretty much married eternal to some pastiche of the sun. I'll tell you there is so much to live for not just for Spike, or Dawn, Faith or friends but the world needs all of us, B. We need you, B. Don't let the shadows win. If it ever consumes you, find your open spaces. Dig out your safe boxes. Or come over to ours and I'll get Laura to hug you or something.' Carmilla half smiled and pulled Buffy into her.

'Come on blondie, we got some vamps to catch. I got your back on this okay. Take this.' She said handing Buffy a stake, 'let's go fuck some shit up to make ourselves feel alive again.'


	2. kitchen celebration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> buffy is poly. the karnstein x hollis kitchen in vienna is a wall of cheers around her ears. truth happens. faith loves it.

Go to talk it’s like our neck’s in a noose. Avoid the obvious.  
-Example

 

‘Buffy, do you think I got out of my coffin like yesterday, darling. I’ve seen them hearteyes of yours. You’re not fooling anyone especially not me.’ Carmilla said, biting down on one of Laura’s special blood brownies.

Buffy drew her hands over her face. ‘Look, Carm. Not many people know-?’

Carmilla chuckled, ‘What that you like the ladies, or lady, that you like dear old Faith, that you like Spike too. That you’re poly but scared and set in your ways sometimes that you’re too foolish to say yes and enjoy the fuck out of life? Don’t you owe it to yourself? After everything?’

Carmilla popped the rest of the brownie into her mouth, the crumbs falling to the sides of her lips. She shrugged. Wiping them away with her black polished fingertip as Laura huffed from her place on the counter top licking the wooden spoon. She paused to clear her throat and added, ‘Carm. A little harsh, babe?’  
She said, jabbing the spoon flicking chocolate batter towards her partner. 

Buffy looked between them stuck. She’d been so careful to hide it. So careful coming from Faith’s bedroom all week though, the spare room in Hollis-Karnstein residence had a squeak and Faith was far from ashamed about their tet-a-tets. She was brazen and had chuckled at Buffy’s rosy cheeks of panic.  
The world was against her. The closet was so transparent. These people were her friends though. It was okay. Only them? Little slayer steps for now. 

Breathe. It’s not like she had to tell Giles yet? and when Xander found out. Oh gosh. Ugh.

‘Maybeireallylikebothfaithandspikeandijustdidn’tknowhowtotellyouboth,’she gasped for breath. Laura hopped down from the kitchen side and pulled Carmilla into a kiss and grinned wide, ‘Drinks are on you, Karnstein. You did it.’  
‘Told you Buff, this girl is always trying to kill me again.’ Carmilla smirked arm slung around Laura’s back.

Buffy paused, confused, ‘What. the. fuck. guys. You had drinks waging on this. Drinks. You backed me into the corner. This was important to me.’

The door swung open, Faith, Spike, Giles, Xander and Anya bundled in to the small kitchen from the hallway and Mattie strutted in pulling a party popper into the air as Spike blew on a kazzo, his arm slung around Faith’s shoulders. ‘Jolly show, Buff. You did it, you blazing blonde beauty.’

Faith pulled herself free and kissed Spike’s cheek before pulling Buffy to her and nodding for a second before dipping her and kissing her openly to a wall of cheers from her found family. 

Maybe this was going to be okay. Buffy thought as she pulled Faith’s pretty strong skull tight against her fingers. With the hellmouths sealing and re opening throughout the nights in Vienna, they’d found their little homes within eachother.

Likewise, Faith could finally show the world who she truly loved and the third slayer in all of Vienna: ex-rogue and convict after a decade and a bit of waiting was finally drawn full circle in the arms of her Chosen one: B.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to cole  
> (who is forever an enabler of this, you've helped me progress in so many ways, darling)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to Luther the series for inspiring this  
> 


End file.
